Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Responds, Apple Exposes Passbook

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Foursquare Responds to Facebook Nearby By Tapping Facebook’s Friend Graph (SearchEngineLand)
Foursquare has made a quick response to Monday’s announcement of Facebook Nearby, with its own announcement today that Foursquare Explore is cranking up its personalization. It’s going to use Foursquare activity from a user’s Facebook friends to improve the recommendations in Explore.

Big Metros and Small Indies Play ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ (Street Fight)
Tom Grubisich: Metro newspapers are shrinking — both in head count and amount community news they can publish with now-limited resources. But they still have an important edge on their hyperlocal competition — reach. But now some metros are deciding to trade reach for news..

Apple Files to Patent Passbook’s Digital Coupon Feature, Hints at NFC (Apple Insider)
In a patent filing discovered on Thursday, Apple provides an in-depth look at the inner workings of its Passbook app — the digital coupon, ticket and gift card storage solution which comes pre-installed on all new iPhone and iPod touch products. The invention calls for a “coupon wallet” that stores unique identifying coupon information, such as numbers or barcodes, which can be scanned or input into the mobile device via a camera or touchscreen.

Case Study: Using LinkedIn, Twitter to Cultivate Local Relationships (Street Fight)
Chicago-based Foiled Cupcakes is a delivery-only business, but by tapping into networks on LinkedIn and Twitter, and keeping a close watch over the reviews posted on sites like Yelp, owner Mari Luangrath has been able to cultivate relationships with potential customers and position her business as the go-to destination for companies that need to buy desserts for in-house events or client gifts.

How Google Maps May Have Actually Helped Apple (GigaOm)
Across the 12,000 apps and 12 ad networks it tracks, MoPub saw impressions from devices using iOS 6 rise 29 percent between last Tuesday and Saturday. MoPub believes that change came from people finally upgrading to iOS 6, after holding out for Google Maps.

A Wave of Start-Ups Helps Small Companies Outsource Their Tasks (New York Times)
This season, dozens of start-ups are competing to take on small businesses’ holiday headaches. Here are four time-gobbling situations and the young companies vying to eliminate them.

ByteLight partners with Solais Lighting to make LED-based positioning a reality (Pando Daily)
ByteLight has announced a partnership with Solais Lighting, allowing the luminary manufacturer to produce lighting products that interact with ByteLight’s indoor positioning tech. ByteLight calibrates the signals given off by LED lights and prepares a smartphone to receive the signals via its camera and then process the information to suss out its current location.

Here’s One Daily-Deals Business That Isn’t Getting Clobbered (Business Insider)
Signpost has changed from offering its own deals to running a dashboard that helps small businesses manage all their marketing promotions in one place. As a result, its business is starting to take off: the company tells us it has experienced 30% month-over-month growth this year.